All Chapters of The Space Between Full Moons: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter TwoThe cabin the magazine had rented for her sat at the end of a gravel spur half a mile past the last streetlight, close enough to town to feel like a decision and far enough to feel like a statement. Elena parked, killed the engine, and sat for a moment listening to the tick of cooling metal and the much larger silence underneath it — a silence with texture, with layers, entirely unlike the flat white noise of the city apartment she'd left behind three days ago with a duffel bag and a list of excuses she hadn't had to use on anyone, because there'd been no one left to give them to.The cabin was smaller than the photos online had promised — one bedroom, a wood stove, a porch that sagged gently on one side like it was leaning in to listen to something. But the windows faced the tree line, uninterrupted, and that was the only feature that had actually mattered to her when she'd scrolled through the listing at two in the morning, unable to sleep, needing to feel like she was a

Chapter FourThe town gathering — Priya had called it a "harvest social" with a straight face, despite it being early June, a discrepancy nobody in Thornwood Hollow seemed inclined to explain, as though the name had simply calcified into tradition long after anyone remembered why — took over the small green beside the church on Saturday evening. String lights strung between two ancient oaks, foldout tables heavy with casseroles under handwritten index cards naming their owners, a bluegrass trio playing with more enthusiasm than precision from a raised platform that might once have been a gazebo, before time and weather had worn away its more decorative ambitions."You're doing the thing," Priya said, appearing at her elbow with two plastic cups of something that smelled aggressively of cinnamon and, underneath that, something stronger. "The photographer thing. Cataloguing everyone with your eyes like you're going to write a caption for each of us later.""I have no idea what you're ta

Chapter Six She didn't tell Priya. She didn't tell Alvarez. She told herself, driving out toward the ranger station access road as the light went gold and then bruised at the edges, that this was simply good journalism — a source offering unsupervised access, and only an amateur would turn that down out of caution. It was a thin justification and she knew it, turning it over in her mind the whole drive, testing it for weak points the way she'd test any story before she trusted it in print. Rowan was waiting at the trailhead when she pulled in, leaning against his truck with his arms crossed, dressed for the woods in a way that made his ranger uniform from the station look almost costume-like by comparison — worn canvas jacket, boots that had clearly seen every kind of terrain the Cascades had to offer. He didn't smile when she got out of the car, but something in his posture eased fractionally, like a held breath finally let go. "You came." "You told me to." She held up her pho

Chapter EightShe didn't sleep well. She told herself it was the tracks, the adrenaline, the strange abrupt fracture of the evening's mood from something almost tender into something that had sent Rowan tearing off into the dark like the mountain itself was on fire. She lay awake listening to the wood stove tick as it cooled, replaying the moment on the outcrop, his hand near her hair, the words he hadn't finished, there are things in these woods that would not survive being found, and I don't just mean the wolves, until the sentence had worn a groove in her mind she couldn't stop tracing.By morning, she'd built a dozen theories and discarded all of them. Poachers, maybe — that would explain the secrecy, the urgency, a family territory worth protecting from outside hunters.But poachers didn't explain the flare of his nostrils, the fear in his face when she'd raised her camera, the particular quality of this isn't the sanctioned tour that had suggested not caution but something close

Chapter TenElena did not answer Deputy Harmon's question directly. She told him it was an old family photo she'd found in the cabin, left behind by a previous renter. It was a thin lie, and she wasn't sure he believed it, but he didn't press. He bought a bag of coffee, made small talk with Priya about the weather, and left without looking back at either of them. Still, Elena felt the weight of his attention long after the bell above the door had stopped ringing.She didn't tell Rowan about the photograph that night. He came by after dark, as promised, but the explanation he offered was thin and general — old family history, a difficult period, nothing he was ready to discuss in detail. Elena let him believe she'd accepted that answer. She kept the photograph in her jacket pocket and said nothing about Kieran, about Priya's mother, about Deputy Harmon's questions. She was learning, slowly, that in Thornwood Hollow, information was safest when it was shared with almost no one.Two days